Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s embattled radical-left tenant advocate, Cea Weaver, once admitted that fighting for rent control was the “critical first step” in a plan to tank the free housing market and work towards “full social housing.”
Footage of Weaver’s past controversial remarks are among the latest to go explode on social media ever since Mamdani tapped the 37-year-old to be his new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants.
“We decided that fighting for rent control was a strategic and critical first step in the fight for full social housing,” she said in a newly resurfaced clip that is going viral on X.
“A lot of times people ask ‘Why are we fighting for rent control when we have NYCHA? We should be fighting to save public housing’,” Weaver continued.
“We decided that through a program like rent control, we are able to directly challenge the logic of unfettered profit in the real estate market.”
It wasn’t immediately clear when — or where — Weaver made the remarks.
She went on to argue, though, that a push for regulation could potentially “strike a blow to the entire real estate industry at once” by challenging housing as a wealth-building tool.
“The idea is that we could weaken the entire industry at once through a strong rent control campaign, and that would strengthen our ability to do things like fight for social housing,” she said in the video.
The startling comments drew frightened backlash on social media.
“How many New Yorkers (or Americans for that matter) want to support policies that weaken the speculative value of real estate?” one critic asked.
“No one with two brain cells to rub together is going to invest in properties that lose money, and have them just be taken over by the state. It’s a lose/lose/LOSE scenario,” another warned.
Weaver, who is a proud Democratic Socialists of America member, has a long history of housing activism in the Big Apple.
The eyebrow-raising comments are just the latest to spark outrage over her extreme housing views.
In the wake of her City Hall appointment, a series of Weaver’s past social media posts surfaced, including ones where she blasted homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” and moaned about gentrification.
Weaver, for her part, has acknowledged that some of her past remarks were “regrettable” — as Mamdami and DSA comrades rushed to defend her.
The far-left political organization were quick to claim the criticism directed at Weaver was a “desperate right-wing attack” and that the city was lucky to have her advocating for New Yorkers.
Read the full article here
